


marrow

by truethingsproved



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Clary Fray-centric, Not a ship, especially as it relates to the collapse of her idealization of her brother, exploring clary's immense trauma !!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-01
Updated: 2017-08-01
Packaged: 2018-12-09 16:23:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11672757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/truethingsproved/pseuds/truethingsproved
Summary: The clock inches forward. She shakes the dust and blood from her hands and rises.





	marrow

i.

She keeps a list of the dead. 

     She writes it in the last pages of her sketchbook: every name of everyone killed by her blood, her inaction, her failure. Everyone dead for love of her, or her mother, or the promises behind the Fairchild name. Everyone she knows about, at least. There are some names to which her eye is immediately drawn, names written in the perfect, neat slope of her cursive, forced from a shaking hand as if she can bring them back by remembering them.

     Alaric. Dot’s name, crossed out, then rewritten, tentatively. Elliott. And in the center, Jocelyn Fairchild. She lifts her pen, before setting it back down and closing the book tightly, as if in prayer. If she does not tell death where to find them, perhaps they will be passed over. If she does not tell death that they are weak, perhaps he will let them be.

     And then, once again as if in prayer, she opens her book, uncaps her pen. Writes, methodically, a series of letters -- better he had died before he had become the man who destroyed him. Better he had died before he could hurt an innocent, two innocents, a thousand innocents. Better he had died when she could have held his memory close, whispered his name and wished she was not so violently, viciously alone.

     When she finishes, she returns her pen and her book to their place in her bedside table, and she collapses, knees giving out under the weight of her grief.

 

ii.

It sings in her hands, like a miniature star, dropped into her waiting palm -- a sign, a shield. She squares her shoulders and holds her head higher than she has any right, sets her jaw, tries to swallow past the bile rising in her throat. She has been so stupid, so naive, thinking he could be saved, thinking she had the power to undo the evil done in their family name.

     She doesn’t remember going to Sunday school, but she remembers the feeling of awe when she first walked into a Catholic church, ducking inside to wait out the summer rainstorm that had left her soaked through. She remembers the fear she felt staring into the bold, sharp lines of the stained glass windows, the depiction of Lucifer’s fall and God’s triumph; she remembers her flinch away from the clawed hand reaching from a pit of darkness and flame toward a sorrowful Creator; she remembers the despair she felt at the fear she felt upon realizing that God was not sorrowful, merely indifferent. She had taken her chances in the rain.

     She feels it when she sees him. She feels it when she holds his eyes as he grips the electrum, she feels it, curling around her spine and rotting it to the marrow, when he walks away, and she runs after him, calls his name, desperate for one last moment when he is her friend, when her brother could be saved, when she could forgive herself the sin of love loss fear trust hope.

     When she pries his fingers back, he bleeds, and she takes in a sharp breath. It happens all at once: her heart dissolves into dust in her chest, and her blood pumps muddy and thick through unwilling veins. The very act of living is more than she can bear -- the agony of it is exquisite, and she doesn’t think anything has hurt more than the knowledge of what she has to do. It is instinct: her fingers curl around the hilt of her seraph blade, every muscle screaming in protest, and she wonders if he can see it in her eyes. How much she loves him. How angry she is with him for ruining their last hope. How badly she wants him safe and whole and hers -- but he’s chosen a side, now, hasn’t he?

     The sound of a blade cutting through flesh and muscle is sickening. He looks down at her, an indifferent God, and she feels fear.

 

iii.

The hunger in his expression is tinged with sorrow. She feels his fingers tight around her throat and she feels his pulse in his palm, pressed against her neck, beating in time with her own.

     She does not beg. She does not give him another chance to be the man he could have been.

     Slowly, carefully, meticulously, she counts in time with the beat of his heart and the thrum of his blood, and she wonders if it hurts very much to die. And then, almost peacefully -- I’ll see Mom.

     His fingers tighten. The world looks blurred and hazy and grey, and there is something almost pitiable in his expression. She wants to tell him that she would have loved him. She wants to tell him that she would have kept him safe. She wants to tell him that he could have come home, and he would have had a family. Instead, she lets her fingers relax for a moment, and she wonders if it hurts very much to die.

     She wonders if Luke knows she’s sorry. If Simon knows what he means to her. If Jocelyn would be proud. If the only family she’s ever had would be proud to call her theirs, if they knew this was how she died: eyes fixed on her brother’s, hand stained with his blood, heart ripped open and lungs shredded and spine rotted.

     Perhaps they would be. But she would not.

     This isn’t how you die, angel. This isn’t how your story ends.

     She raises her blade, comes down on him like the hand of a God worn-out and bleeding for love of her creations. His indifference vanishes as quickly as it had appeared and she falls from his grasp, feet hitting the floor.

     This isn’t how you die.

 

iv.

She screams until her throat feels torn, beats the stone floor with her fists until they bleed. Better he had died before she loved him so. She is hollowed-out and broken beyond repair, a wreck, a ruin.

     The clock inches forward. She shakes the dust and blood from her hands and rises.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first time I've tried actual Shadowhunters fic. I think I like it.
> 
> Currently at drastorias on tumblr; I'm just usually on my various RP blogs more. Feel free to get in touch with me directly if you want to know where to find me! I'll be back at my personal eventually.
> 
> I think I really love the potential for this dynamic; I love complicated sibling relationships (almost as much as I love strong and loving sibling relationships), and I love the way Clary and Jonathan have been built as one another's opposites. And while I know that this source material is particularly incest-y, all Clary & Jonathan fics I write will be strictly non-sexual and non-romantic.


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